Let two persons go out for a walk; the one a good sketcher, the other having no taste of the kind. Let them go down a green lane…The one will see a lane and trees; he will perceive the trees to be green, though he will think nothing about it; he will see that the sun shines and that it has a cheerful effect; and that’s all! But what will the sketcher see? His eye is accustomed to search into the cause [my bold] of beauty, and penetrates the minutest parts of loveliness. He looks up, and observes how the showery and subdivided sunshine comes sprinklingdown among the gleaming leaves overhead, ‘til the air is filled with the emerald light. He will see here and there a bough emerging from the veil of leaves, he will see the jewel brightness of the emerald moss and the variegated and fantastic lichens, white and blue, purple and red, all mellowed and mingled into a single garment of beauty. Then come to the cavernous trunks and the twisted roots that grasp with their snake-like coils at the steep bank, whose turfy slope is inlaid with flowers of a thousand dyes. Is not this worth seeing? Yet if you are nota sketcher you will pass along the green lane, and when you come home again, have nothing to say or to think about it, but that you went down such and such a lane.(John Ruskin in The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton)

I've finally found a justification for my habit of focusing on all the tiny details... The sketch above was made during a fishing afternoon at river Sabor. I made it in the few minutes of relative quietness, while I was not chasing my smaller daughter who meanwhile took off her shoes some half dozen times and climbed at least 90% of the rocks around us...It is to note that Ruskin's admiration for drawing was not focused on talent or the final product – even Ruskin downplayed his own sketches as unoriginal and listless. Instead, he saw value in the action. The practice of drawing, he believed, evolves the individual from a “looker” to a “seer.”

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Há já vários anos que, cada Outono, olho para as bagas do pilriteiro e penso: "Tenho que experimentar fazer um doce com isto". Foi desta. Ao fim do dia, atirei-me ao pilriteiro que cresce em frente à nossa casa, e toca de apanhar bagas. A verdade é que estive prestes a desistir, porque estava-me a custar estragar um arbusto tão bonito. Mas depressa percebi que mesmo que apanhasse muitas bagas (e foi quase 1 kg, com a ajuda do resto da família, que depois se juntou a mim), o pilriteiro tinha tantas, que praticamente não se notava a diferença.Depois de bem lavadas, fervi-as durante uma hora, juntamente com a casca e o caroço de uma maçã, por não ter a certeza se as bagas têm pectina suficiente para gelificar bem, esmagando-as de vez em quando com um daqueles utensílios que servem para fazer puré. Depois, filtrei com um pano fino de algodão (deixei a filtrar de um dia para o outro). No dia seguinte, coloquei o líquido numa panela com açúcar (proporção1:1) e deixei ferver até atingir o ponto de estrada - deita-se um pouco num prato, passa-se o dedo pelo meio e, se a "estrada" assim aberta na geleia não voltar a fechar, é porque está pronto (não esquecer lamber o dedo ao fim de cada teste). Ficou... delicioso!It's been several years that every autumn, I look at the Hawthorn berries and think that I must do some kind of jam with them. Well, this was it. Two days ago, I took a big bowl and filled it with hawthorn berries. I almost gave up, because I was feeling a bit guilty from spoiling such a beautiful plant... But I soon found out that even if I picked up a lot (and it was near 1 kg, with the help of the family who soon joined me), the hawthorn was so full of berries that one hardly noticed the difference.
Back home, I washed the berries, put them into a pan and covered with water. I added the peel and seeds of an apple, because I was not sure the hawthorn berries had pectin enough to produce a firm jelly and I cooked for about an hour, mashing them now and then with a potato masher. After this, I filtered the whole thing using a cotton cloth and let it strain over night. The next day, I poured the liquid into a pan, added sugar (1:1) and heated gently until the jelly had reached setting point - you can tell it when you pour a bit into a dish and you run your fingertip through it and the line you open by doing this does not close again (be sure to lick your finger after each test to see how it tastes!).

I've been using most of my spare time to work on my plant sketches lately. Last week I went on another botany field trip, this time to Montesinho, to see some beautiful mountain habitats (and on my way back, I also saw a cute red squirrel). Below you can see one of my sketchbook pages in progress, and above, the finished page showing three typical species found in dry mountain heathlands in that area.

The drawing didn't turn out very good. It was windy and hot and the only coloured pencils at hand were those of the girls, but it turned out it was a really bad quality set, hard and with very little pigment (I have to remember to replace and put them aside). But this place is so lovely that I decided to write about it anyway. If you ever drive near Bragança, make sure to catch the road towards the border with Spain at Portelo. Just outside of a small village named Rabal, on a slope surrounded by vineyards, you'll find the Xastre Tavern. It is built of stone and wood and here we can have excellent food, read a book (it is an Official BookCrossing Zone!) or drink something outside, if the weather is good. I've seen Griffon and Black Vultures flying above the hills just in front and I know other people who've seen Red Deer and Wild Boar. But even without such observations, the scenery is well worth the time spent outside, especially now, since Autumn makes everything look even more lovely.

Another "plants in autumn" sketch, this time of a Common Hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna), an extremely valuable medicinal plant. It is used mainly for treating disorders of the heart and circulation system. This effect is due to the presence of bioflavonoids in the fruit, which are also strongly antioxidant. Although not very appetizing raw, it can be used used for making jams and preserves and the fruit can be dried, ground, mixed with flour and used for making bread. A tea can also be made from the dried leaves. I never tried any of these, but I'm inclined to try the jam.Below is a picture of a Common Hawthorn taken in front of our house. It looks as pretty in spring, covered with white flowers, as it does now in autumn, full of tiny red fruits.As you've probably guessed, I love this time of the year. Not being an early bird at all (I prefer to work at night), this is the season when I'm able to watch a good sunrise without too much effort... Here's one, the picture was taken from our kitchen's window while preparing breakfast:Happy autumn, everyone!

I've just started a new sketchbook (I love starting a new sketchbook) and what a better way to do it than drawing plants in autumn, when the weather is perfect to go outside - not too hot and not too cool? I've been in "plant mood" lately, as I've started to join a botanist friend in his field classes. If you like plants too, and you can read Portuguese, his own blog is surely worth a visit. Check t out at Das Plantas e das Pessoas. Having studied zoology, I've always wanted to learn more about plants and my kids are finally big enough to do something like this with me without disturbing someone else's class too much (the truth is they enjoyed it a a great deal).The drawing above is of a Holm Oak (Quercus ilex), done with coloured pencils and outlined with a black waterproof pen. Below the drawing is a picture of M., learning how to tell the difference between Holm Oak and Cork Oak (Quercus suber) leaves - not as easy as it might seem, since there is so much variation within the same species and even within the leaves of a same tree! (tip: look at the inferior side of the leaves: the secondary nerves of those of the Cork Oak grow until the margin of the leave; those of the Holm Oak get fainter and disappear before reaching the margin).

Back from holidays, here are two pages from my sketcbook with a few sketches of things found by the seashore (plus one of the things itself). We had lots of fun trying to identify everything, though we haven't always been successful...

This week's Outdoor Hour Challenge from Barbara's Handbook of Nature Study blog under the theme "crop plants" is the bean / seed germination.
Every spring, we sow some varieties of beans in our vegetable garden (image above). We have just begun to harvest the first fresh green ones, which we have been eating in salads (boiled with salt, cooled and seasoned with olive oil and finely chopped garlic), soups or - my favourite - a recipe I don't know what to call in English, the direct translation would be something like "fish from the vegetable garden" which are basically green bean fritters : boiled with salt until crisp-tender and then dipped into a flour/egg/water mixture and fried in hot oil until golden brown (and since we're here, if you have any favourite recipes that you don't mind sharing, I'd like to hear about them).

M. drawing the beans in her notebook

Every year too, the girls and I choose some bean varities and dip them into cotton balls soaked with water to watch them germinate. This year, M. already did it several days ago and when the challenge was published, we had just transfered her already enourmous plants to the garden. But she and C. were delighted to do it again. This time, we looked for all the varieties we had at home (some purchased, some saved from last year's crop, others offered by friends). We found out we had 12 different varieties (!!) including several types of Phaseolus vulgaris (white, black, mottled, red...) and also soy beans (Glycine max), and three different species of small beans from another genera (Vigna): Azuki beans (Vigna angularis), Black-Eyed Cowpeas (Vigna unguiculata) and Mung beans (Vigna radiata). So far, we have only germinated Phaseolus beans, so this time we picked just 2 varieties of these, and then we soaked all the other four. Let's seewhat happens, all four were bought for cooking, not for sowing, so I'm not so sure we'll be successful. We'll see!

I've been following Barbara's Handbook of Nature Study blog for quite a while now, but so far I've never participated in any of her weekly challenges. So this is it. She's starting a new series of Outdoor Hour Challenges under the theme "crop plants" and this week's focus is on clover. It couldn't have been more appropriate, for we've been precisely discussing this plant during the past week, after reading a post about it on Das Plantas e das Pessoas, a blog I recommend to everyone who likes plants (it's in Portuguese only).

M. looking at clover root nodules with a magnifying lens

After reading the pages dedicated to the clover onThe Handbook of Nature Study, which can be downloaded here and about which I'veposted before, we looked more carefully at the real plant during an afternoon spent in the garden, where we have plenty of them. In our country there are several tens of Trifolium species, but the one we have in our garden is the White clover (Trifolium repens). We used to have the beautiful Strawberry clover (Trifolium fragiferum) as well, but it has become scarcer and scarcer over the years and at this time we couldn't find any of it in bloom. So we took pictures of the White clover, we saw it's white flowers being visited by several bees (though we couldn't catch them with the camera) and we also saw many dry brown flowers turned towards the ground instead of upwards, a sign that polination has already occurred. We opened some of them and there they were, the tiny seed, some yellow, some brown. Then we dug up a plant and we saw a tiny nodule on its root. "Each nodule is a nestful of livingbeings, so small that it would take twenty-five thousand of them end to end to reach an inch; therefore, even a little swelling can hold many of these minute organisms, which are called bacteria." "The clover roots give the bacteria homes and place to grow, and in return these are able to extract a very valuable chemical fertilizer from the air, and to change its form so that clovers can absorb it. The name of this substance is nitrogen (...)" "After the clover crop is harvested, the roots remain in the ground, their little storehouses filled with this precious substance, and the soil falls heir to it." (from A Handbook of Nature Study)

The girls were amazed when I told them this story (in fewer words...) and then we looked at another plant that we have growing together with the clovers, a relative actually, which is also mentioned in the Handbook of Nature Study: the alfalfa (Medicago sativa). Above there's a picture of its beautiful purple flowers.And below, some of the drawings M. and I made in our notebooks.

My notebook drwings. I'm not sure whether the leaves on the left belong to another species, ot to T. repens as well (maybe the ecotype adapted to more humid soils mentioned at Das Plantas e das Pessoas)

Drawings by M. (7 yo)

And what a better way to finish, than with a beautiful poem by Emily Dickinson (1830–86), which precisely talks about clovers and bees?

A few days ago my husband and I plus two friends were discussing the fact that there's still a long way to go before our country develops a strong public opinion regarding nature conservation issues. We agreed that some progress has been made in the last years, but mostly, people's knowlege is too superficial and easily led by the media (whose knowledge seems to be even more superficial, most times...). And in some cases, good people full of good intentions, end up doing even worse than if they had stayed put. The basic idea is that you can't love and defend what you don't know and in Portugal, most people don't really know what they have. We laughed (not of joy, though...) when one of our friends told us about a talk he gave at his daughter's primary school about Portugal's wildlife. He made a PowerPoint presentation with great photographs of some of our native plant and animal species and told us how amazed the children - and the teachers were. "Do we really have these species in our country?", one of them asked in awe. It's weird how they all know and teach about the African elephants, zebras and the like, but only a few have heard of the Iberian wolf, the Roe deer, the Golden Eagle, the Griffon Vultures or even the apparently more modest Golden-stripped salamander. But only apparently. The golden-striped salamander (Chioglossa lusitanica) is a threatened endemic species inhabiting stream-side habitats in mountainous areas in the northwestern Iberian Peninsula, meaning that this is the only place in the world where it can be found. I painted the one up there with acrylic paints on watercolour paper. I hope it inspires you to find out a bit more about our native fauna and flora!

This is a quick sketch of a small village hidden (really!) in the southern slopes of the Spanish Cantabrian Mountains, a land of oak and birch woods, Brown Bears and Roe deer. It was our first camping trip with our daughters. It was a short stay (only a couple of nights) and we still have to work on their trekking ability - they get tired very quickly and were always wanting to go back to the tent and the cats that lived in the camping - the true stars of the whole thing for them, it seems to me! All in all, it was a great holiday, we did not see any bear, but we watched several roe deers, a few red deers, birds, butterflies, newts and even... many free ranging cows, one of which got really interested in our telescope!

Every Friday afternoon, I pretend I have nothing to do and I go with my two daughters to a great sculpture workshop. It is a workshop for children, but since my younger one is too small to attend on her own, I was told I had to be there with her. What better excuse could I have found? Of course I spend my time helping the girls and not doing anything of my own, but the truth is I am learning a lot! My head is already full of ideas of great things I could do with wire, paper and an array of other materials. Which is really funny, for I never even thougt of giving sculpture a try, I've just always assumed it was not my thing. But meanwhile, I'm just having lots of fun helping my oldest daughter with her amazing ocellated lizard. It's still in the beginning (the front legs are missing, as well as the paper "coat", the painting...) but I already love it!

After consulting with several colleagues, browsing through borrowed books and searching the web, we've finally chose and ordered a field guide to dragonflies and an atlas of the Iberian flora. Both arrived this week!

The dragonflies field guide has photographs and high quality illustrations, not just of the whole animals (males, females, juveniles and individual variations whenever relevant), as well as little anatomical details, whenever they are important to allow identification. It is a fascinating world of unsuspected diversity and complexity – I would say much more than that of butterflies, which have been filling our days lately..

The atlas of flora is a whole world inside two volumes of more than 700 pages each... It is a great work with keys that allow the identification of plant families and species but not as pretty as the dragonfly guide, for most of the pictures are photographs and illustrations resume to small black and white details needed to identify some of the species. And in this field, you know, I always prefer if everything is illustrated! Anyway, the practical side of the matter is what counts here and I believe this is the closest thing I can get to a thorough identification guide. Let's see how I manage to improve my botanical knowledge and my identification skills! Who knows one day I'll pick up an old idea once discussed with a botanist friend of creating a plant guide of our region, written by him and illustrated by me (as if I haven't enough to do already...)

All in all, looking at these books that have just arrived and looking outside through my window, I feel really lucky to live in one of the last of Europe's biodiversity hotspots that somehow manages to strive despite all the highways, windfarms, dams and high speed trains that lurk in the horizon. If only a larger part of us (politicians included) was aware of the incredible richness we still have...

Work is still heavy, but at least it has slowed down enough for us to be able to enjoy a proper weekend without major self recrimination – this weekend there was absolutely no work at all – yay! There was time for two walks, one of them including a picnic, visits from friends and a bit of work in the vegetable garden.

As you're probably guessing, there was time for butterflies identification, lots of struggling with flowers identification (anyone with a good suggestion of a field guide for inland Iberia, please come forward) and even a bit of drawing. But just a tiny little bit of each, because I was so enjoying the act of doing nothing but looking at the kids running across the green fields, lying in the grass and looking up at the sky through the green branches of the trees (is there something better in the world than that?)... Suddenly, the words from a poem by Fernando Pessoa came to my mind (something even more unusual for me, not being a poetry lover, than being able to enjoy a proper weekend...):

LIBERTY

Ah, how delightful
Not to do one's duty,
Having a book to read
And not read it!
Reading's a bore,
Studying's worthless.
The sun gilds things
Without literature.

Willy nilly runs the rivers
Without an original edition.
And the breeze, this very one,
So natural, matutinal,
Since it has time, its in no hurry...

Books are papers daubed with ink.
Study's the thing where the distinction
Is unclear between nothing and nothing at all.

When there's fog, so much the better
To wait for King Sebastian's return -
Whether he comes or not!

Poetry is grand, and goodness too, and dancing...
But best of all are children,
Flowers, music, moonlight, and the sun
That sins only when aborting and not bearing.

And more than all of this
Is Jesus Christ
Who knew nothing of finances
Nor even claimed he had a library...

P.S. The coarse drawing, done with a waterproof pen too thick in my notebook (I was too lazy to reach for the finer one) is of one of the plants we were not able to identify. The butterflies were identified with the help of the great guide “Borboletas de Portugal”, edited by E. Maravalhas and available at Tagis. (left to right: Lycaena phlaeas and Issoria lathonia)